The AMD A8-3500M APU Review: Llano Is Unleashed

[WR2]

It will be interesting to see what AMD's OEM customers production models bring to the table and where the pricing falls out.

And how the Intel OEM customer models will 'push back'.
This could be a foretaste of that push back. Lenovo IdeaPad Y470 14-inch laptop Core i3 2310 $619 Core i5 2410 $679
4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, JBL speakers, GT 550M graphics

 

[macewrox]

AAAGGHHH AMD RELEASE YOUR DESKTOP CHIP. My POS 1100T demands an upgrade!

 

[vz7]

That's pretty much the opposite result as to what you see in this review. The i5-2520M could only run about 3/4 of the graphics tests, and when it did, the A8-3500M was almost always faster. Anandtech also tested the A8-3500M versus a bunch of very high-dollar quad-core i7s with discrete GPUs instead of the i5-2520M+IGP that costs about the same and would be an actual competitor to the A8. There's a reason why Anandtech is nicknamed "IntelTech"...

Did you even read my post? Did you see the word "desktop"?

So far as "llano is for laptop not desktop" goes, the fact is that AMD is releasing desktop llano chips, and one could use these for HTPC.

 

[torque79]

OMG 3rd quarter for bulldozer?? I've been waiting to buy a new pc since March! Sandybridge came out in January! how long can it take for AMD to finally hit back? its taking a LOT longer than it used to.

 

[pazygozo]

[citation][nom]torque79[/nom]OMG 3rd quarter for bulldozer?? I've been waiting to buy a new pc since March! Sandybridge came out in January! how long can it take for AMD to finally hit back? its taking a LOT longer than it used to.[/citation]

LOL, i've been waiting too. i5 750 has served me pretty good but i want more. this APU is definitely a good start thou

 

[need4speeds]

This chip pretty much kicks intel in the laptop market. Most of the games shown in the benchmarks are hard games to run. Metro2033 and crysis2 wont run on many pretty good gaming desktops, never mind on a laptop.
Games like dirt2, prostreet, ut3, batman, fear2,cod blackops,left4dead2 should all run well on this apu.

Hey maybe i will buy a laptop finally, i never had a laptop before. Laptops in the past were always too slow for gaming so i never bothered with them. The ones that could play games were big clunky laptops that were super expensive.

 

[killerclick]

[citation][nom]lradunovic77[/nom]A smart man will buy Laptop with i7/i5/i3 CPU and Nvidia or decent standalone ATI GPU onboard. The pricing will come out the same but performance is going to be way above this AMD solution.[/citation]

A smart man will not buy a laptop for gaming, only idiots play games on laptops.

 

[lradunovic77]

That is what i am trying to say. Just because only idiots play games on laptop reason less to get LLano

 

[need4speeds]

I wonder if there will be a 10watt dual core, 240 shader liano that can be used in a psp like game pad that has a hdmi out? I can see sony, nintendo, m/s xbox eyeing this. This has console written all over it.
Maybe a new personal game pad that can plug into a tv with hdmi out and double as a full gaming system? Maybe a psp cell phone/mp3/gaming system?

 

[-Fran-]

HTPC undisputed king IMO.

With those low TDP's and with an 191 HQV score, is there anything more to say? Add that to Anand's throughout Video Playback review and the crown just fits perfectly to Llano's.

Cheers!

 

[Guest]

Why did they test the DX9 versions of DX10/11 games for the Antialiasing benchmarks, knowing that Crossfire wouldn't work?!

The rest of the review is ok, but the Antialiasing page deserves the title of dumbest test of 2011.

 

[Stardude82]

[citation][nom]striker410[/nom]I suppose we need to stop suggesting i3-2100 and H67 over in the forums then? Go AMD![/citation]
No, this is a mobile chip and nobody will claim that integrated graphics are the i3-2100's strong suits. If you read Anand's reviews, the desktop version is a lot less impressive and only yields performance in line with an Athlon II X4 at the same clock speed.

The fan boys are out today like flies in summer.

 

[boiler1990]

You could probably play Crysis 2 on a netbook with the A8 @ 30fps min with a lowered detail level. That is pretty incredible.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]ToTTen[/nom]Why did they test the DX9 versions of DX10/11 games for the Antialiasing benchmarks, knowing that Crossfire wouldn't work?![/citation]

More interested in comparing AA performance to Sandy Bridge, and it can't handle Dx11.

 

[sinfulpotato]

[citation][nom]nebun[/nom]That was exactly what I was thinking. No average user cares about performance. Being able to use it is what counts.[/citation]buddy, i care about performance....sometimes speed is good...why wait forever to do something....for example, why wait 45sec for a game to load when you can do it in half the time...catch my drift...speed is good, and GOOD graphics is also good[/citation]

Your average consumer who buys a 600 dollar laptop wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a Athlon x2 6000+ or a i7 x6 extreme. I would be able to, but they would not. Processing power is ahead of its time in the notebook market, battery life and graphics will become a more important factor.

 

[MU_Engineer]

[citation][nom]vz7[/nom]Did you even read my post? Did you see the word "desktop"?So far as "llano is for laptop not desktop" goes, the fact is that AMD is releasing desktop llano chips, and one could use these for HTPC.[/citation]

Anandtech's desktop Llano preview also doesn't show the Intel IGP beating the Llano APU's graphics performance in very many applications. Dragon's Age Origins and Starcraft 2 were the only ones where any of the Intel IGPs were faster than the Llano, and even then they weren't very much faster. Usually it was the Llano performing significantly better than the Sandy Bridge IGP. So I still don't get your "barely scratched the Intel IGP" comment as the AMD APUs are significantly faster in almost every graphics test than the Intel IGPs.

 

[jryan388]

You should include smallluxgpu as an OpenCL benchmark along with the other 3d modeling & rendering tests.

 

[mosu]

just a question: Why didn't you use the same hard drive on all the test setups, knowing that hard drives impact significantly on performance and why you used the fastest of all on the Intel rig?And one more thing:no USB 3.0 on Intel,no 1920 x 1080 displays on 5-600 $ systems(laptops).

 

[rohitbaran]

That part may be the what manages to challenge Intel on the processor side.

Please correct.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]mosu[/nom]just a question: Why didn't you use the same hard drive on all the test setups, knowing that hard drives impact significantly on performance and why you used the fastest of all on the Intel rig?[/citation]

Because we run benches off of a RAMDisk.

Hard drives have *no* impact in performance in our benchmark suite.

 

[buzznut]

I also think this is a great job by AMD. They are focusing more on different areas other than top CPU performance, I think this is a good strategy for them. Over the last 6 months I've seen some very compelling products, and low power performance is where its at for mobile products.

 

[mayne92]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]A smart man will not buy a laptop for gaming, only idiots play games on laptops.[/citation]
So wait, I game but also need to do programming, photo-processing, animations, a mobile temp/devel-server, run multiple VMs, etc. and turned my desktops into a clustered server. But I must be an idiot b/c I can and do game on a laptop and don't care to use my clustered-rig 24/7. OK kiddie.

 

[stingstang]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]You just listed two. Obviously everyone will have their own priorities, but I think it's safe to say that you will find the majority of people will be more concerned with graphics performance than the ability to encode or render media. That's really what it comes down to; you're not going to notice a difference while surfing the net.[/citation]
No...no. Do you see the fps charts? Almost every new game out there is unplayable unless you're at the lowest resolution. You DO NOT BUY a Llano laptop to game on without discreet graphics, but that's what their selling point is trying to be. AMD completely failed this launch, and they should be shaking right now.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]stingstang[/nom]No...no. Do you see the fps charts? Almost every new game out there is unplayable unless you're at the lowest resolution. You DO NOT BUY a Llano laptop to game on without discreet graphics, but that's what their selling point is trying to be. [/citation]

Most games ran at 1280x800, only two were relegated to 1024x600. These are both very playable resolutions, especially on small laptop screens.

Are you suggesting that you need a 1080p monitor to enjoy gaming? Because I heartily disagree. in fact, I've played a fair amount of games on this Llano laptop, and it's a very good gaming platform.

Based on this personal experience, I don't think your argument holds up.



[citation][nom]stingstang[/nom]AMD completely failed this launch, and they should be shaking right now.[/citation]

I'm not sure how you could equate the fastest most capable integrated graphics launch as a failure because the CPU side isn't up to snuff. by the same logic the Core i5-2500K is a failure, because Intel HD graphics 3000 is slow.

 

[Mysteic]

I just want to make sure everyone know that the Llano's chips for desktops will have faster clock speeds, higher TDP, and more powerful GPU's? They are not going to stick an A8-3500 in a desktop so you can get these numbers from your HP. The desktops will get chips roughly 60% to 100% faster in them.

While I am realistic and fully expect the seem similar results when compared to Intel chips in the same market and price segment, I also expect Turbo to function better and close the gap a little better.